Job Opportunities for Youth (JOY)
This program intends to mitigate growing unemployment among young population through various innovative schemes. International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that nearly 75 million young individuals aged between 15 and 24 are currently unemployed. Our long-term goal is to introduce the programs that help increase employability of these individuals.
The first of the projects under this scheme encourages young individuals to create their own job opportunities by themselves. The program is called ‘Create your Own Job, Youth’ (COJY). Unlike traditional approaches in which a person strives for obtaining a job in formal job market after achieving certain qualification (such as certain level of education and vocational trainings), we have developed a complementary approach in which youth are encouraged to invent ways to create their own job or increase their employability which will exploit the prevailing conditions in which they are living with or the technological change that’s taking place in their surroundings. For this, we facilitate through various creative ideas and supportive roles. We begin with targeting youth cohorts in marginalized communities who may come helpful in mitigating problems prevailing in their communities and transform them, on one hand, into a better place to live and create jobs for themselves on the other. In this program, the person seeking job identifies the problem prevailing in the society and come up with possible solutions. Such individuals will then be connected with international donors who are interested in leaving the positive impact in such communities with their contributions. The role of KarmaQuest International is to work as a bridge to connect such youth workers and the donors. The workers must work under the supervision of participating genuine NGOs or community partners. We plan to create a pool of such workers from around the world. They include educators, environmentalists, social activists, human right activists, legal service advisors and others who come helpful to transform their societies. The workers will be assigned ratings based on the number of hours served in the communities and the quality of services they provided. The donors will be provided the details on how the job was accomplished. The participating NGO or community partner is required to send the details on the work done, including the verification from the family or community served. KarmaQuest International will do the final approval of the task accomplished before the payments are made. In the case of not approval from us, the amount paid will be refunded to the donor. We pursue all avenues possible to ascertain that the worker genuinely worked for the intended job, ranging from attendance verification from targeted family or community itself, satisfaction ratings on quality of service provided, supporting pictures or videos and other pertinent testimonials. The underlying feature of this program is also to exploit the benefit from wage differential between developed and the developing countries. Our study shows that the average minimum wage in top 20 high-wage countries is 23 times larger than the average minimum wage of bottom 20 low-wage countries. This suggests that when an individual works at minimum wage in a high-wage country and he/she makes a donation of one-hour wage, his/her counterpart in the low-wage country on average will work for 23 hours for the same one-hour wage earned in the high-wage country, that is, it is equivalent to nearly three full-time work days in low-wage country. Taking this fact into consideration, this program was designed to connect philanthropic people in developed world with the people who are desperately in need of job in developing countries who want to work multiple hours for the same wage to transform their societies. This is also a good opportunity for international donors who want to volunteer in developing countries but can’t make trips in those countries. They would rather work at home at any job they like, donate the part of their earnings thorough this program and pick up an individual to work on behalf of them in a program or country of their choice in the developing world. Our belief is that this unique international volunteering model creates multiple positive benefits both in developed and developing countries. First, international donors can work at home and they don’t need to sacrifice time traveling abroad which will contribute for the production of goods or services in their own home country from their current job. Second, the money will also contribute to the production of even larger amount of goods or services through many-fold hours of work in the underdeveloped part of the world. Third, the contribution will produce positive outcomes in most deprived communities. Forth, donors will save travel costs. Fifth, the contribution will expand NGOs’ capacity in their operation with more workers available to them.
Facilitating Jobs for Extra-Marginalized Families
We designed this project to offer an immediate help for most vulnerable families who cannot afford their children’s proper education, healthcare and other basic needs due to the acute financial difficulty they face. In this project, we identify and rank poor households based on children’s vulnerability in the family and connect them with prospective employers for steady and dignified jobs. We also train young men and women in these families, when needed, to fit them into formal job market. Employers can pick the one from the list who meet the requirement of their job description or the one who need job urgently based on Children’s Vulnerability Index (CVI). We keep employers posted about how their contribution has left an impact on the growth of children in families whom they offered the job. We calculate the Children’s Vulnerability Index (CVI) for each family based on how much the family is deprived in terms of economic condition and the children’s growth potential in the family, and this index is used as a criterion to negotiate jobs with businesses. In calculating CVI, we basically employ Alkire-Foster (AF) approach as developed by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative which has been widely used to measure Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). We do some modifications in this method though to meet our own needs. Our unit of analysis is household which is characterized by an index representing its vulnerability to support children’s uninterrupted growth and thus the need of a secure job for the family. We use many other criteria representing family’s deprivation but place a sizable emphasis on children’s growth potential in the family when calculating this index.
Promoting the agenda of alleviating global poverty through job creation
Development is not a phenomenon that can be achieved within short span of time. It is an intergenerational process under which current generation collectively allocates enough resources for the multidimensional growth of the future generations. We believe that our developmental efforts must be directed towards guaranteeing uninterrupted growth of the future generations and it is achieved through creating an environment where the family has stable source of income in terms of steady and secure jobs. We also strongly believe that good jobs for all is also a crucial need of the time for securing sustainable global peace and prosperity in the world. KarmaQuest International promotes this agenda to a broader audience and directs all efforts to guarantee at least one good job for all families living on the planet such that the forthcoming generations will not have to live on less than a dollar a day.
Other proposed programs
Our underlying principle is to generate innovative ideas and apply those ideas on the ground to leave the impact. Over the course of time we will come across various such ideas and we will bring them into discussion first and in implementation later through various programs. Some of the imminent projects that may come into operation at some point in the near future have been appended.